


Two Thousand Bees

by slytherclawkilljoy



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/F, With Killer Bees
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-19
Updated: 2016-01-19
Packaged: 2018-05-15 01:30:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5766766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slytherclawkilljoy/pseuds/slytherclawkilljoy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inspired by this post by "cookiexmilk" on tumblr:</p>
<p>"I love those otps that are like</p>
<p>person A: can play 12 different instruments, got accepted into Harvard, is organized</p>
<p>person B: once ate 15 cold hot pockets in a row, tripped over their shoelaces, claims they can fight 2000 bees"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Thousand Bees

"It's good to have you home," Regina murmured, leaning over from behind the couch upon which Emma now sat, heavy and exhausted after a long drive up the coast. Emma flopped back, eyes drooping shut and smiled groggily at the tickling of slender fingers weaving themselves through her hair as Regina bent down to brush her lips lightly against her forehead.

"Dinner will be ready in half an hour," she said more loudly to the room at large, glancing over to where Henry sat hunched over a mess of books and papers spread wide on the low table, before moving over to the bureau in the corner. "Drink, dear?"

"Oh God, yes." came Emma's groan from the couch and Regina smirked down into the whisky.

The blonde accepted the glass gratefully, taking a long gulp and instantly sparking a little out of her exhaustion at the rip of liquid the against the back of her throat. She took another sip, slightly more measured than the last, and placed her glass down on the table, grabbing up one of Henry's papers at random as she sat back into the cushions.

"What are you reading anyway, kid?" She scanned over the page, mumbling aloud, "Classical vs. Operant…"

"It's for my psych class, we're studying the different types of behavioral conditioning." He reached out and pulled the paper from his mother’s hand, and filed it carefully in his pile of notes.

Regina dipped herself down to sit at the other end of the couch, swinging her feet up to rest in Emma’s lap. "Conditioning,” she hummed and sipped her drink, “so you’ll be reading all about Pavlov and his dogs?"

"Pavlova what now?" Emma whispered loudly to Henry out of the corner of her mouth. She made to reach for the open packet of donuts she had spotted at the end of the table but the leg in her lap kicked her hand playfully back down.

“The lasagna is in the oven.” Regina scolded, and smiled at the little huff she got in reply before continuing. "Ivan Pavlov was a Russian physiologist, best known for his work on using conditioning to trigger instinctive responses with new stimuli that had been completely neutral before the training began. He rang a bell every time he fed his dogs, and they salivated at the prospect of their meal – eventually they would simply salivate on command, regardless of whether or not there was food. He simply had to ring the bell and they would drool away.”

Henry beamed up at his mom, "Yeah, we read about him, but this is about a different study. They conditioned bees to land on pictures of people with a sugar syrup, to replicate the pollen of a flower, and they discovered that they can recognize individual human faces – They pick out the right one even if it’s upside down!”

Emma sat up a little straighter, processing her son’s words. "Wait, so you can train a bee to think a person is a flower?"

"Basically yeah,” he nodded enthusiastically, “so you could teach it your face and it'd fly to you. You could have it follow you around kinda like a pet dog, only smaller and it can fly.” He paused thoughtfully, “Or you could teach it someone else's face and it would fly to them - that'd freak them out."

Regina laughed and gestured idly with her free hand, "If you really wanted to freak someone out you could train more than just one - one bee following you is vaguely irksome, sure, but a hundred is really something to be afraid of."

"Whoa, like an army of bees.” Henry’s eyes were wide, “Whoever you did it to would really freak out though and if you freak out in a swarm they're going to start stinging. If you did it with loads someone could die."

Regina shrugged and sipped at her scotch, "Unless you know with certainty your target isn’t allergic to bees someone could die if you did it with just one.”

"Ok, but an entire army of killer bees is dangerous for anyone, even if they're not allergic," Henry countered. “So that’s less of a prank and more like an assassination attempt.” 

“Assassination by bee?” Emma piped up, amused at the strange trajectory of the conversation. "We’re not talking about killer bees, we’re talking about regular bees who just happen to be attracted to your face. That’s a seriously inefficient way to assassinate a person. Bees are tiny, you could just fight them off."

Regina chuckled, her eyebrow quirking up in a challenge, "You could not fight off an entire army of bees that had been conditioned to fly at your face in search of glucose."

Emma nodded, indignant, "Yeah I could. Me vs. a hundred bees, I'd win easy"

"Right,” Regina drew the word out, layering on the sarcasm, “’Easy’ – If a hundred is so easy, what about a thousand? One thousand bees, flying at your pretty little face."

"Done. Like I said, easy.” Emma chopped her hands through the air in front of her, “Just slap ‘em down." She moved her arms around in a very poor imitation of something like kung fu or tai chi, as Regina and Henry laughed.

“So tell me then dear, how many bees do you have to be up against before it's not easy, exactly?"

Emma stilled then, considering Regina’s question with a gravity that only made Henry laugh harder still. "I reckon maybe two, two and a half thousand."

Regina snorted and choked on her whisky as Henry’s laughter began to intersperse with a lot of head shaking and slightly frightened eyes. "Mom,” his words fell out between his chuckles, “bees are really important. You should probably not fight and kill two thousand of them with your ninja moves.”

Emma shrugged and raised her glass in a salute, "Hey, I’m not going to go looking for it buddy, I’m just saying if it happened, I could take ‘em."


End file.
